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EDITORIAL PAGE THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN Ev-ry Afternoon Except Sunday . Ry THE GEORGIAN COMPANY At 30 East. Alabama St., Atlanta, Ga. HhterM as second-class matter at postoffice at Atlanta, under act of March 3. 1873. Subscription Price—Delivered bv narriar. 10 cents a week. Bv mail, $5.00 a year. Payable In advance. No Man Is as Great as His Work X »? M In His Little Lifetime He Can Do Only a Small Part of Any Important Task, Then He Must Pass On and Leave Its Completion to Others. “You can take it from me. young man, that neither Wall street nor the Standard Oil Company nor any other power on earth had anything to do with the building of this railroad. I built it with my own brains. They got me the money; they got me the meu. It is a good railroad; one of the best in the world, and it is going to last, for many years as a monument to me. But bear in mind that T made the railroad; the railroad didn't make me.’’ This came from a pompous, iron-jawed railroad president, as he scowled at an inquisitive reporter. The reporter duly set this speech down, and somewhere in some newspaper it may be found, essentially as we have set it forth here. It. isn’t true, it isn’t just, it isn’t even common scuse, but there can be no doubt that wnen the railroad president uttered it he believed it, every word. He fancied then, as he fancies now, that he was greater than his work, and that the railroad prac tically sprang from his brain, as we are told that lesser deities sprang from the brain of Jove, who was the head of the family of deities worshipped by the thoughtful but credulous people of earlj 7 times. Now this man, able as he was, merely put together that railroad. Centuries before he was ever heard of men dug iron ore from the earth, and thus provided the means by which his track and locomotives and car wheels could be built. While the buffaloes were still kicking up dust clouds along his present right-of-way, Stephenson was tinkering at his tea kettle of a locomotive engine, thus beginning ONE BRANCH of the railroad business, of ALL OF WHOSE BRANCHES this man calls himself the master. Then other men improved the locomotive and devised meth ods of engineering and harnessed the lightning to the electric telegraph, and taught steam how to work in a steam shovel, and educated the public into ways of buying railroad' stocks and bonds, and experimented with different kinds of rolling stock, until from the abundance of the work that they had produced it was possible to choose and arrange the materials for a rail road. And meanwhile the tough, sinewy pioneers who had crossed the plains with ox teams, fighting their way against Indians and wild animals and famine and blizzards, developed a new country and planted the wheat fields that made the railroad worth while. So the great railroad builder, instead of being greater than his work, was merely a small part of it. He took up the work of hundreds, even thousands, of other men, and, following the example of many other railroad builders, combined it all into a tolerably efficient, railroad. Relatively he was about as much the originator of the great system that he brought together as the fourteenth coral insect in a reef composed of fourteen hundred billion coral insects is the originator of the reef. The world requires men like this man—-men with imagina tion and nerve, who can see its needs, and who have th’e courage to supply them, no matter whether their motives are purely phil anthropic—which is often—or wholly selfish. But the world can not afford to let such men get conceited or to fancy that com pared to their own important personalities the work that they are doing is a mere incident. Several times in history big, able men have become possess ed with the idea that they were greater than all other earthly beings. The last of these was Napoleon, and he lived to under stand. if not to admit, his mistakes. America has been more fortunate in its great men. Wash ington knew that compared to the cause he served his own per sonality counted for but little. There was never a time that he, would not have stepped aside to let an abler man take charge of the Colonial army, had an abler man been possible to find. Lincoln counted his country first and himself last. He had no vanity that his contemporaries were able to discover; he had no ambition other than to see the country once more united and at. peace. Great men were both of these, yet neither of them for a minute fancied that he was as great as the task that he had been set to do. The world that most of us know is a great workshop, in which each must find the job he is best fitted to do. and do it as well as he may. Education is hut studving what other men haw done in the world in order that we ma\ waste no lime in discovering what has already been discovered or in following paths that have been found to lead in no useful direction. There is no work so unimportant that it is so be despised, so long as it is wholesome; there is no field of human endeavor that has been so fully cultivated that it will give no further re turn for labor. The man who realizes that instead of being greater than his task he is infinitely small in comparison with it has a chance to do his best, and in doing his best he is reasonably sure to be successful. Whether he gathers together a great fortune or not does not matter a great deal. Some men were not meant for for tunes, and are spoiled by them But whether or not he can justify his existence bv being nf use to those that are here and those who are to come mat ters a great d<sal. Les him take hold of any work that comes to hand, if he 'in<£. that he can do it, and after learning all that there is to know about what has been done upon it go courageous!} to work t 0 do a little more if he can. He will soon find that as he progresses the importance of his task becomes constantly greater in his eyes, and that as the 'oarshave passed by he has come to prefer it to an\thing else in the world. Whether it is medicine, law. engineering or selling grocer ies, if h<- f>o] s if j s a great and useful work ho will find in it pleasure and satisfaction, and unconsciously he will become ne of th' ort.j's really valuable workers. The Atlanta Georgian HE NEVER HAD A CHANCE That Is What Nine Men Out of Ten Who Are Failures Say. Look Out That You Don’t Say It Yourself. By TAD •’-w ’ '' I I ;. ; 1 ’ I I ZSOax. i PRIVATE I - ■ OFT 1 - ; -'3 : I —jfcjL NO. 10. One of the regulars in the corner saloon straightened Yum up and he left to see some good friends. Yum wanted to start all over again and be a right guy. He thought he'd take a small beer ror luck before he started, but one of the gang told him that drinking beer wasn't right; whisky was the stuff. Drinking beer, he said, always made him think of a fellow trying to scratch his back without any finger nails. Yum took a few shots and went down to see an old friend. He sat in the hall. When the office boy asked for his name he said,- “Just tell him that Yum is here; lie’ll know.’’ The Working Man and His Money save, Save, Save. The Future Will Care For Itself By THOMAS TAPPER. (The following article is punted b.v permission from Mi'. Thomas Tapper's book just published by the Platt & Peck Co.. New York, and copyrighted by them, entitled "Youth and Opportunity.") IET us keep before us tiie aver age workingman and his money, and let us ask what his money means, what its power it, and how it may serve him now and in the future; for every man. who earns little or muon, looks upon money almost hungrily as the one resource of safety. He wants the use of it Kow and the com fort of it in the future. Most peo ple get the one—the use of it in the present—but not the other, the future protection of it. Can a man have both? ft is a comforting fact to stats that he can. But In order that a workingman of any status, may have this two-fold use of money ho must begin the study of two things: 1. Os the money he earns. 2. Os the time he possesses. From these he must get the tw:o foid satisfaction he seeks —present comfort and future insurance. How shall he begin? Assuming that he gives the very best there is In him for the money he receives, it becomes clear that money <s only another form of the best there Is in him. Ife thinks and works, is faithful to his task, . ... at the end of the week the pa envelope GIVES HIM THESE QUALITIES BACK AGAIN IN ANOTHER FORM. This money is a thing he can exchange readily for other things. BuJ before he be gins to exchange it he should pause a moment and say to himself: What He Should Think When He Gets His Pay. This envelope contains all the effort of my health, strength and thought for a week. I may or may not be able to keep health, strength and thought up to the present pitch to the end of my life: hence this money should protect and guaran tee me protection later, when I may possibly be less so. Pur&ufng this line of reasoning, his first deduction will be this: Os all evils against himself that he commits the wasting of money is one of the most disastrous, for it is equivalent to wasting his own WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12. 1912. The boy returned to tell Yum that his boss was out. Yum went to other offices, but they all seemed to be out. Finally he thought of the boy that drove the butcher wagon in the small town years ago. He came out and saw Yum. He thought perhaps that if his old pal was given a help ing hand he might get going after all. He told Yum to see him the next day and that he'd rig him up with some new scenery and give him a job. ( The world seemed a bit brighter now. Yum had a slight chance at hist. To Be Continued. power of mind and body. The money he earns should serve him faithfully, and he, in turn, must be faithful to himself in the use of his money.- Up to the present moment he haa perhaps saved nothing. The rule of his life has been a vaiatt tion of "easy come, easy go." But it has not put him forward. He is no better off. has nothing in hand. He is, in fact, a little older and a little nearer, the time when his efficiency may be less than it is today. He Must Make Himself a Student of Money. If he can succeed in seeing him self in this light, he will begin to he a student of money. The first thing he must do is to study in order the following subjects: 1 Appropriation. 2. Equipment of himself as a worker. 3? Tne daily leisure he enjoys. By appropriation is meant this; If he is a family man. certain fixed items of expense must be met reg ularly. He should sit down and make out an accurate list of these. He should study this list until he Is positive that it is right, that it represents only those things that are necessary >o himself and to his family. One of three results will be before him. (1) The appropriation is beyond the amount he earns, (2) or it is equal to it, leaving no mar gin. (3) or it is below it and ac tually does leave him a margin. If he finds that he is living be yond his income or even within it, his duty is to begin again and re apportion his expenses so as to leave a margin, for the future is only secure when a margin exists. It may be ever so small, but it pos itively must exist, or he is skating on Ice so thin that he is in con stant danger of breaking through and drowning himself and his loved ones. There Is required of hltn noth ing less than actual courage, brav ery of the highest kind, to give up things he has perhaps been accus tomed to, and to establish the mar gin he must have; but if he is se rious and manly he w ill do it. His position now is this: He earns a. definite amount. Every time the contests of the pay envelope is dis tributed there Is something left for the savings bank, or for life insur ance. or for both. He has now put his financial as- fairs in order. It has occurred to him that anything a man can not afford is really a waste, and waste is the most expensive of all habits. Extravagance is exceptionally ex pensive. Earnest men are unani mous in their denunciation of it. Mr. Theodore Roosevelt has said; “Extravagance rots character; train youth away from it. On the other hand, the habit of saving money. while it stiffens the will, also brightens the energies. If you would be sure that you are be ginning right, begin to save.” Five cents thrown away for a thing one docs not need is all the money a dollar can earn in twelve months, invested at. five per cent. But five cents placed in the sav ings bank daily, amounts in fifty years, to nearly $3,000. A dollar bet on a game and lost cannot be earned as interest in one year on a sum less than S2O. Small sums saved daily even for so short a time as ten years, accumulate im pressively. Ten cents saved daily for ten years amounts, at four per cent, to nearly $450. One dollar a week placed tn a savings bank continually for fifty years amounts to over SB,OvC. These illustrations should give one faith in the power of a little money to reach considerable sums, IF IT IS CONSTANTLY SET ASIDE. John TVanamaker, w'ho is said to have started in life on a ten'-dollar-a-week salary, says: Difference Between Spending All or Saving a Part. "The .difference between the clerk who spends all of his salary and the clerk who saves part of it, is the difference, in ten years between the owner of a business and the man out of a job.” And Andrew Carnegie, whose success-in accumulating money is known to everybody, thus speaks of the losses that the improvident man must suffer: "The failure of the man who does not save his money is due not only to the fact that lie has no money with which to take advantage of the opportunities that come in the way of every man, but also, and particularly, to the fact that such a man is not able or fit to avail himself of these opportunities. The man who can not and does not save money, can not and will not be anything else worth while.” , THE HOME PAPER Dr. Parkhurst’s Article on Civilization in Man Is Fm Not Lasting —and— Our Reversion to Former Types Written For The Georgian By the Rev. Dr. C. H. Parkhurst THIS is the time of the year when a good many people are leaving home, or, it had better be said, are leaving the place where they are accustomed to stay, for in some cities there is not very much of the home idea left, and what is called home is for the most part simply the part of the town where one sleeps, where one takes his meals and where one keeps hi.-' trunks preparatory to going into the country or going abroad. And even those who are so cir cumstanced as to be unable to ab sent themselves for any consider able time, stay away as long as they can and do not return till they have to. It m<jy be Paris, it may be Coney Island, we all remain where we be long as little of the time as we can. By constitution, we dwellers In great cities are all tramps. Even people who have elegant homes to live in and comfortable beds to sleep on will lock their doors, for sake their beds and go rushing out into the woods for the fun of camp ing out. Difficulty of Living Down Inherited Impulses. It is a reversion to the original mode of living when our ancestors roamed through the forests and dwelt in tents, huts and caves. It is difficult to live down the im pulses that have descended to us from the habits of centuries ago. The original savage keeps creep ing out in us. We are constantly on the verge of becoming wild men of the woods again. A few centuries of civilization have hard work battling against the hundreds of thousands of years that our race lived through before it struck civilization. It takes old momentum a long time to wentr out. It requires con stant struggle to keep from drop ping back into the hole that man kind has crawled out of and that it is homesick to fall back into again. it is the same with man as with i brute beasts. I met on the cars the other day a man who had along with him a Siberian dog. The ani mal was gentle and could be safely played with by a little child, "but," said the gentleman, "there are spots of wolf in him. and were I to let him run wild in the woods for six •months all the savageness belong ing to his ancestry would break out in him, and he would have to be shot or caged.” In man or beast civilization is not a permanent quality. It is against nature and becomes extinct unless constantly renewed. We are kept respectable by restraints. t>?« Shirtwaist Days t& By CHESTER FIRKINS. T T THETHER pink or white or blue, y y Whether prim or peek-a-boo, Here's a welcome unto you, Pretty waist! Os all summer comers blest. You’re the brightest and the best, Every wintry clothing pest You've effaced. Oh, but aren't we glad to be From those "ladies suits” set free, And the ugly, crochety Pony coat! As the May-time flowers save Country glade from Winter's grave. So you give the city pave . Summer's note. It is for that reason that going off in the summer and breaking loose from our accustomed sur roundings involves an amount of risk. We are likely not to come back in as good moral trim as we were in when we went away. There is a sense of wild liberty experienced by any man when he feels that he. is looked upon by people that do not know him. Human Beings Held in Place Like Bricks in a Wall. Like bricks In a wall, we are held in position In part by the hu man bricks that we are wedged in between. It is unpleasant to fall below the expectations that others have concerning us, and those to whom we are total strangers have no expectations regarding us one way or the other. They will not be surprised, there fore, if we behave well, nor any more will they be surprised if w» behave badly. People who are good Christians when living among Christians easily turn reprobates when let loose among people of ths other kind. It Is true to creed, that “once # saint, always a saint,” but it does not always seem quite true to fact. Clamp a steel spring and It will retain its enforced shape so long as the clamp is on, but remove the ciamp and it will fly back to the form that it was in originally; even after a thousand years it will fly back. There Is a great deal of efficacy, therefore, in-clamps. Going away from home and from usual sur roundings and people is, therefore, dangerous, for it means removing some of the clamps. Much of what we commonly sup pose to be our virtue is simply the unnatural and enforced shape in which we are held by external pressure. There has recently been published the story of a person who had been dead for five min utes, but who was resuscitated by mechanical pulsation.' Goodness Not Altogether J fi A Matter of Artifice. That shows what forces operat ing from without will do for the bpdy. They will do somewhat the same thing for the inward man and create In him a condition of arti ficial goodness. That does not mean that good ness is altogether a matter of ar tifice, but only that goodness at its best is more or less infirm, and is much more dependable when ex isting tn circumstances that are of a kind to encourage it and to keep it in good spirits. Trim and dainty, tried and true, I You are democratic, too; For the Many, like the Few, Hail your fame. At her factory machine Sadie wears you: Fashion s queen In her gleaming limousine Does the same. s Welcome, little Summer Waist! 1 hough they say you're not straight laced, Let such pedantry be placed Out of view Chic and charming, new and | What has Earth that’s half so sweet- 1 Save the girls, who bless the street. I WEARING you? I